The Comstock Club. Goodwin Charles Carroll

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СКАЧАТЬ 'Oh, they are necessary evils. We want the local news and the dispatches, and we have to endure them.'

      "I am glad you robbed him, Colonel. I wish you could rob them all. If a child is born to one of them we have to tell of it, and mention delicately how noble the father is and how lovely the mother is. If one of them dies we have to jeopardize our immortal souls trying to make out a character for him. They want us every day; we hold up their business and their reputations, beginning at the cradle, ending only at the grave."

      "What kind of character would you give me, were I to die?"

      "Try it, Colonel! Try it! And if 'over the divide' it should be possible for you to look back and read the daily papers, when your shade gets hold of my notice, I promise you it shall be glad that you are dead."

      "But what about that unregenerate soul that you were going to tell me of – has some broker sold out some widow's stocks?"

      "No: worse than that."

      "Has some one burglarized some hospital or orphan asylum?" suggested the Colonel.

      "Oh, no. Old Angus Jacobs, you know, is rich. Among strangers he parades his thin veneering of reading, and poses as though all his vaults were stuffed with reserves of knowledge. Well, while East last spring, he ran upon a distinguished publisher there, with whom he agreed that he would, on his return, write and send for publication an article on the West.

      "He came and begged me to write it, confessing that he had deceived the publisher, and asserting that, he must keep up the deception, or the integrity of the West would be injured in the estimation of that publisher.

      "I went to work, wrote an article, became enthused as I wrote, wrote it over, spent as much as three solid days upon it, and when it was finished I looked upon my work, and lo, it was good.

      "Then, at my own expense, I had it carefully copied and gave the copy to old Angus. He sent it East. To-day he received a dozen copies and a letter of profuse praise and thanks from the publisher.

      "I saw the old thief give one of the copies to a literary man from San Francisco, telling him, cheerfully, as he did, that he dashed the article off hastily, that most of the language was crude and awkward, but it might entertain him a little on the train going to San Francisco."

      "I never heard of anything meaner or more depraved than that," indignantly remarked the Colonel, "except when I read the funeral service over an old Dutchman's child once, in Downieville. Speaking of it afterward, the old Hessian said:

      "'Dot Colonel's reading vos fine, but he dond vos haf dot prober look uf regret vot he ought to haf had' – but here comes the Professor."

      Professor Stoneman joined the pair, and when the greetings were over the Professor said:

      "I am just in from Eastern Nevada: went to Eureka to examine a mine owned by a jolly miner named Moore. It is a good one, too – a contact vein between lime and quartzite. The fellow worked, running a tunnel, all winter, and now he has struck, and cross-cut, his vein. It is fully seven feet thick, and rich. I asked him how he felt when at last he cut the vein.

      "'How did I feel, Professor,' he said, 'how did I feel? Why, General Jackson's overcoat would not have made a paper collar for me.'

      "There are a great many queer characters out that way. Moore is not a very well educated man. In Eureka I was telling about the mine – that Moore ought to make a fortune out of it – when a man standing by, a stranger to me, stretched up both his arms and cried: 'A fortune! Look at it, now! Moore is so unspeakably ignorant that he could not spell out the name of the Savior if it were written on White Pine Mountain in letters bigger than the Coast Range. But he strikes it rich! His kind always do.' Then he added, bitterly: 'If I could find a chimpanzee, I would draw up articles of copartnership with him in fifteen minutes.'

      "And then a quiet fellow, who was present, said: 'Jim, maybe the chimpanzee, after taking a good look at you, would not stand it.'

      "I was sitting in a barroom there one day, and a man was talking about the Salmon River mines, and insisting that they were more full of promise than anything in Nevada, when another man in the crowd earnestly said:

      "'If my brother were to write me that it was a good country, and advise me to come up there, I would not believe him.'

      "Quick as lightning, still another man responded: 'If we all knew your brother as well as you do, maybe none of us would believe him.'

      "That is the way they spend their time out there. But I secured some lovely specimens: specimens of ore, rare shells, some of the finest specimens of mirabilite of lead that I ever saw. It is a most interesting region. But I don't agree entirely with Clarence King on the geology of the district. You see King's theory is – "

      "Oh, hold on, Professor," said the Colonel, "it does not lack an hour of midnight. You have not time, positively. Heigh ho. Here is Wright. How is the mine, Wright?"

      "About two hundred tons lighter than it was this morning, I reckon," replied Wright.

      "But tell us about the mine, Wright," said Alex, impatiently. "How is the temperature?"

      "How is your health?" responded Wright, jocularly. "If you do not expect to live long, you might come down and take some preparatory lessons; that is, if you anticipate joining the majority of newspaper men."

      "No, no; you are mistaken," said Alex. "You mean the Colonel. He is a lawyer, you know."

      "It is the Professor that needs the practice," chimed in the Colonel. "Just imagine him 'down below,' explaining to the gentleman in green how similar the formation is to a hot drift that he once found in the Comstock."

      "I will tell you a hotter place than any drift in the Comstock," said the Professor. "Put all the money that you have into stocks, having a dead pointer from a friend who is posted, buy on a margin, and then have the stocks begin to go down; that will start the perspiration on you."

      "We have all been in that drift," said Alex.

      "Indeed, we have," responded Wright.

      "I have lived in that climate for twelve years. One or two winters it kept me so warm that I did not need an overcoat or watch, so I loaned them to – 'mine uncle,'" remarked the Colonel.

      "But, do you know any points on stocks, Wright?"

      "No, not certainly, Alex. I heard some rumors last night and ordered 100 Norcross this morning. Some of the boys think it will jump up three or four dollars in the next ten days."

      "I took in a block of Utah yesterday. They are getting down pretty deep, and there is lots of unexplored ground in that mine," said the Colonel, quietly.

      The Professor, looking serious, said: "I have all my money the other way, in Justice and Silver Hill. They are not deep enough in the north end yet."

      Alex got up from his chair. "You are all mistaken," said he, "Overman is the best buy, but it is growing late and I must go to work. What shift are you on, Wright?"

      "I go on at seven in the morning. By the way, you should come up of an evening to our Club. We would be glad to see all three of you."

      "And pray, what do you mean by your Club?" asked the Colonel.

      "Why," said Wright, "I thought you knew. Three or four of us miners met up here one night last month. Joe Miller was in the party, and as we were drinking beer and talking about stocks, Miller proposed СКАЧАТЬ